Whats it all about?

Losing our virginity…it happens to almost all of us, no matter who we are or where we come from. How did it happen for you? Ever wondered what other people think and feel about this never-to-be-repeated experience?
I am on a mission to find out. Follow my journey as I collect stories from as wide a selection of people as possible. From men and women, old and young, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim and Catholic, from the funny and the sad, to the happy and occasionally, the unbelievable. I am in search of the one story that we rarely share. Come and join my adventure.

Contribute your story?

Have you got a story you would like to post? Or an opinion you would like to share? Email me: katemonroe@yahoo.com
Remember to tell me when you were born and what country you come from. All names will be changed to protect identity.

Experience Project

August 29, 2008

This story brings to mind ‘the Monro theory’, a little something that I’ve been working on for the last few years. It’s also known as the ‘don’t save things for best’ theory and I’ll tell you why. A few years ago, I was burgled. It wasn’t the first time this had happened but it felt different for one reason. I realized that I had a whole bunch of things that I never wore because I was always ‘saving them for best’. Dresses, shoes and pristine trainers, still in their boxes and saved for that day when you want to wear the perfect white training shoe. Let me tell you something. Number one, someone, somewhere on the Harrow Road is wearing those trainers and it isn’t me, and number two, today is as good a day as any to wear perfect shoes. Don’t save things for best. Take them out of the box, put them on your goddam feet and wear them. Because if you don’t, someone else might. And then you’ll feel like a big chump.What has this got to do with virginity loss? Quite a lot actually because there is something to be learnt from this tale. Whilst I am not suggesting that you get out there and lose your virginity to the first stranger you meet, I would like to suggest this: saving it for best does not account for the vagaries of life. It does not allow us to experiment, to mess up and make amends, to experience life with all its ups, downs, ins, outs and whatever other way you want to do it. In short, it doesn’t allow us to take life by the scruff of the neck and grow from the experience.Losing your virginity is the first step in the right direction. It might be ok, you might even get lucky and enjoy it, but if you don’t, it doesn’t matter because there is plenty of time to improve your game. Don’t shoot for perfection.That’s what I enjoyed about this story. I like the fact that its author knows this. She is prepared for the fact that her adventures could be pleasurable, fun or emotional – or perhaps all three at the same time. Conversely, she also understands that some of it might not - but she takes responsibility for herself and dives into the melee with the best piece of armour that money can buy: an optimistic attitude.Make the best of this moment. The past is gone, the future doesn’t exist yet. This is the moment that we do have. Live it like you mean it.Mary. Aged 26, from North Carolina.‘Hey Kate,To start with, I wasn't raised religiously, but I became an evangelical Christian when I was sixteen. So I grew up thinking of sex as a natural, value-neutral thing. I looked forward to having it, but it was still something that was a long way off and thus not too worrisome.Joining the church changed that. I bought into the idea that ‘good Christians’ remained pure and waited until marriage. When I went to college, I immersed myself in another evangelical church, where I basically only knew church people who also felt the same way about relationships and sex. Although it was common to hear couples talking about ‘struggling with purity’, the public expectation was that everyone was waiting till marriage. My friends today are shocked when I tell them how many of my friends got married so young, right out of college, but when you're waiting (or you at least planned to wait); it begins to make a lot more sense.I never really had a problem with this system because I believed in it. I thought waiting and not messing around with casual encounters was going to save me a lot of emotional and spiritual angst. And to some degree, I do still see the wisdom of that, or at least I understand the reasoning. That changed after I graduated and started working. I got involved with a co-worker at my new job pretty quickly - it was kind of a new world where I didn't have to go through a long ‘getting to know you’ process simply to make out with someone. But I was still attached to the church and I told him straight away that I wasn't going to sleep with him. I felt like that was the best for everyone - no surprises later on. He wasn't keen on it however, and every effort I made to continue the relationship always broke on that choice - that I wasn't willing to give him what he wanted. This earned me a sort of status as a ‘church girl’ who wasn't going to give it up, even though many of my life choices in other respects were edging away from the church. A major turning point for me was going to grad school in another state. Although now I look at it as breaking free of the church, I just continued the process of slipping away from the church lifestyle or culture and its value judgements. I never made an out and out decision that I was going to lose my virginity, but I became more amenable to losing it in certain situations. Partly that was helped by becoming more confident, interested in non-church people, a part of a culture where sex was accepted or expected, and also by having a handful of casual encounters with escalating sexual intimacy.The majority of these hook ups have taken place in the last few monthss, and since they've built on each other, they've also built my confidence in myself, my desirability, and my attractiveness, (although the casual/one night stand nature of them can also cause my confidence to fluctuate). These are the experiences that make me start questioning the status of my virginity and the definition of losing one's virginity in general. When I think about my own virginity in the context of these experiences, I realize that, for me, talking about virginity in terms of ‘losing something’ is totally backwards. Rather, with each encounter, I feel more like I'm building up my sexual experience. In this realm, there were many firsts, which were always accompanied by a little jolt and a realization that I had a decision to make about whether I was ready for that step: the first time a guy touched me intimately, the first time I took my bra off, the first time I was half naked, the first time I was wholey naked, the first time I touched someone else intimately.Each of these experiences and the ones in between were like taking steps forward, learning or gaining an understanding of my body and how it worked with other peoples' bodies. In this sense, I never felt like I was losing anything, but rather crossing developmental benchmarks that are good and natural and which it seems we are all meant to experience at some point.In other ways, I do understand the idea of loss. Each time I crossed one of these benchmarks or made the choice to allow them, that jolt was like a bell saying ‘Now you've done it; there will never be a first time for that again’ and I think some part of my brain catalogues the situation and compares it to how I thought it would be or how I thought it would happen. Now, post-church, that comparison does not invite self-shame or a feeling of innocence lost. Mostly it's more of a feeling of, ‘Oh, that's different than I expected, but not bad...’ That definitely wasn't always the case, but that's what makes me glad to be where I am now emotionally.I realize now that I actually think of many of those intimate milestones as fractions of the whole sexual experience, which are not necessarily sex when done alone, but culminate in the final experience. In terms of having sex and ‘losing my virginity’, each first time was like losing a little piece of it. As for the most recent experience I had, when I experienced penetration but not orgasm for the first time, I do think of that as the biggest chunk to date. Nevertheless, I think of that more as ‘breaking the seal’ than losing my virginity. Right now I'd say I'm probably only 15% a virgin, but that my self status as a virgin, emotionally, is still intact. It's this emotional virginity that I'm actually glad to say I still have, for myself. Most of my sexual encounters have taken place on a one-night-stand basis under the influence of alcohol and are clearly not meant to result in relationship consequences the next day. While I want to be in a relationship, I don't regret that the experiences I've had have happened in this way. Nevertheless, that mental, emotional, and spiritual image of having sex, really, for the first time in a committed relationship stays with me. I think that's the kind of circumstances that I will need to have to really and truly relax and enjoy good reciprocal sex. Until that scenario comes along, I don't think I'm going to sit idly on the sidelines, but rather, continue to build up my experience. I don't expect it all to be great or even good, but I look forward to trying it all out and moving toward the internal ‘breaking of the seal’, now that it's outwardly occurred.Thanks for listening to my story, and providing a forum for other people's as well.Mary.’

August 23, 2008

I’ve heard enough stories over the last three years to know that the definition of virginity loss cannot be carved into stone. Generally speaking, we use the first instance of penetrative sex to mark this occasion, but since the beginning of time, people have called into question the true nature of virginity loss.

As early as the fourth century, St Augustine bought solace and comfort to those consecrated virgins, raped as an act of war by invading Goths, by using these words to make them feel better: ‘No matter what anyone else does with the body or in the body that a person has no power to avoid without sin on his own part, no blame attaches to the one who suffers it’.

In a roundabout way, St Augustine was probably the first human being to tout about town the idea that virginity could be a concept as opposed to an actual physical fact, something that can reside in the mind just as much as it does in the body. (Quite asides from the fact that he also perpetrated a very blurry line by insinuating that sin was only sin if the victim – usually female - had ‘no power to avoid it’. That was the beginning of a slippery slope if ever I saw one).

As Hanne Blank writes in her fabulous book, Virgin - The Untouched History, ‘the relocation of virginity from the body to the soul was an imperfect solution to the problems of either rape or virginity, but it was also a brilliant stroke of philosophy. After Augustine, both libido and virginity were matters of the conscious self at least as much as they were matters of the body’.

What am I trying to get to here? Well, I am attempting to prepare the ground for an entirely new concept and this week’s guest writer, James Berkon. James is the owner of what he considers to be ‘secondary virginity’, an idea that has cropped up more than once on these pages. The best definition of secondary virginity I have encountered is this:

‘Secondary virginity, or being a ‘born-again’ virgin, is when an individual who has had premarital sex chooses to ‘start again’ and wait until marriage. This decision is not meant to be fuelled by false ideals of what is being chosen, but rather as an acceptance of the past and an attempt to move forward in a new light. In other words, when one chooses to ‘reinvent’ their virginity, they aren't doing so on the pretence of regaining their virginity simply to be able to say they are virgins, but rather to have a clean slate and a fresh start, and to recognize past mistakes and not repeat them in the future.’

I have mixed feelings about this idea. Number one, why should we feel bad about doing something that we were put on this earth to do? Why are we being judged here and who is doing the judging? Number two: is the concept of secondary virginity equally applicable to men as it is to women? Or is this ultimately just another way to try and ‘contain’ women and their sexuality until such time (usually marriage), someone, (usually a man) sees fit? I stand to be corrected on this matter. I hope that men are just as eager to ‘reclaim’ their virginity as I am led to believe that women are.

And number three, having said all that, I have the utmost respect for people who have had sex, a whole bunch of sex even, and then decide, for whatever reason, to forego it until they meet the person that they intend to marry. If people are foregoing sex until marriage for reasons which feel healthy and good for them? I am down with that.

The deal breaker for me though, is that I am not religious and therefore I do not feel judged for my sexual activity. I no longer wish to have pointless sex, i.e. sex that might not be moving towards some kind of loving union, but if I did, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I rest my case, and at the same time, present the case of James, who authors a website on the subject. He is totally up for being quizzed on the subject, so if you would like to send any questions his way, you can email him here:

jlberkon@yahoo.com

Secondary Virginity: The Hidden Treasure - By James Berkon

I was sitting outside the dorms, chatting with a close friend of mine.He was telling me about his ex-girlfriend.They had broken up less than a month before.His heart was heavy with what he was trying to tell me.I placed my hand on his shoulder, "AJ, it's alright.You don't have to tell me if you do not want to."

AJ looked up at me, then placed his hands in his face and uttered these words, ‘James, I lost it.’My heart sank for him.He held back his tears that night, but I knew his heart was bleeding, as many hearts do that have lost their virginity at some point in their past.The rest of the conversation escapes me.I do remember assuring AJ that I understood what had taken place, that I did not condemn him, nor look down upon him for what he and his girlfriend did.Yet, after he had left to go to his off campus apartment that evening I could not help but recall a certain moment which took place in my life a little over three months ago.

I was visiting my sister for the Fourth of July Weekend while she was at her internship for college credit and career placement.While at the resort she was working at, the family and I decided to stop by the pool to cool off from the blast furnace heat.As I walked up the steps that led to the pool and spa area of the resort these words popped into my head, ‘James, what are you going to do if your future spouse is not a virgin?’I stopped dead in my tracks and did not move for a good few seconds.Then I thought to myself, ‘That's a great question.I don't know.’

Hearing AJ's account of losing his virginity only served to reaffirm the one question which had been on my mind for most of the summer, ‘What is someone supposed to do when virginity is lost?Are they condemned and cast out?Are they considered different, even isolated for this act?Is one less of a person after that loss?Do past experiences impact future relationships?Is there even the slightest glimmer of hope?’

As time moved on I would speak with my friends about these issues.They would direct me to the need to forgive and forget but this was never enough.I longed for more.Many of my friends who have lost their virginity longed for more as well.We wanted forgiveness and pardon for sure but beyond this we longed for restoration, the permission and the ability to regain what was lost and given away in the past.Aside from the above questions many more followed: What should a man/woman do if their spouse is not a virgin?Is there more than merely forgiveness, the pain and sting of anger, jealousy, bitterness and regret?Is there healing for those who have lost their virginity?Can one be pure again after this loss?Can past encounters be forgotten?Does a future relationship, even a marriage have to suffer the consequences of past choices?

You see, these issues were such a concern to me, not because I had lost my virginity, but I feared the consequences that uncommitted sex brought with it in a committed relationship.Yet, in asking these questions and seemingly questioning the dignity of others, I could not help but point the finger back at myself.‘Did I really wait for whomever I may marry?Have not I also used women in my past?Didn't I look up hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of women on the Internet?In doing so, didn't I reaffirm their feelings of loss, heartache, and worthlessness?’

Through further reflection I came to the conclusion that no, I did not wait for the woman I would marry.I had cheated her out of what rightfully belonged to her in the first place.I had defiled the gift of myself, which was meant to belong to one person and one alone.I polluted my mind with trash that could potentially cause a rift in a future relationship and impact the intimacy I would share with whomever she may be.I had given my heart away to more people than I could count.

It was in this moment I realized that as much as those who have lost their physical virginity need what many call a ‘Secondary Virginity’, I needed this as well.I needed the chance to start over and be pure once again.I needed to cleanse my mind of the images I had seen for so many years.I needed to stop the sexual activity and learn to love others and live out the language of the body in truth.I needed to reclaim the pieces of my heart I had lost in the past so they could be made new and eventually given to the one who deserved them the most.I needed to regain the gift of self so I could be a gift to others and truly give myself in marriage.

Little did I know that in less than a year I would be given this gift and it was far greater than I could have ever imagined.

Fast forward one year to finals period.I was getting out of class after finishing my third of five finals.I felt confident, yet with school as with life, grades many times are up in the air.As I was walking back to the dorm I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders; for the first time ever in my life. I felt free.I felt new.I felt renewed and given back a sense of self, a true sense of personhood.I was made new.I had my life back.I was given the gift of self back.It was amazing.These words echoed through the depths of my heart, ‘Forget your past.’The past which was filled with such bitter loss and heartache was no more.What I had done had lost its power over me.The images from the past....gone.Almost as if they were erased from my memory.My heart which felt so divided, so beat up, so defiled was restored.I felt as if I had everything to give to my friends.My body, which consequently feels a sense of shame and defilement after casual sexual encounters was pure, the feelings of shame and dirtiness were no more.

This, my friend, was beyond all belief.To say it was surreal would do this gift great and profound injustice.It was beyond anything you could imagine that was surreal.This, my friend, was perfect.I could not have imagined this gift of a ‘Secondary Virginity’ to be anything better.It is far more than just waiting for marriage.It is more than a period of abstinence.It is more than finding pure ways to share love with others.These are all a part of it, but ‘Secondary Virginity’ is just that, a second chance at virginity. Another chance at the gift of self which was once thought to be lost forever.A second chance at finding your heart once again and being able to give the gift of your heart to those you love.It is a second chance to redeem the memories of the past so they may lose their sting and power over you.It is another chance to give the gift of a purified body, even though physical virginity is lacking.It is in short another chance at life, at love and at discovering your true self.

How did we cope in the days before we could post our daily status for the world to see and understand? Or reach blindly out into the ether and discuss the un-discussable with faceless strangers on digital talk boards? And twitter a running commentary of every hiccup, highlight and hiatus of our day in the hope that someone else might relate to how we feel? In short, in days of old, how on earth did we connect with our fellow human beings?

The answer is, we probably didn’t. Remember that old phrase, to suffer in silence? Well, there was a whole bunch of suffering and a big heap of silence in days gone by. The personal was not for general consumption like it is today. Unless, of course, you were ‘Ubique’, a brave lady who was driven to write this letter to a well known women's magazine in 1935….

‘Can any mother help me? She began, ‘I live a very lonely life as I have no near neighbours. I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading but with no library am very limited with books. I get so down and depressed after the children are in bed and I am all alone in the house. I sew, read and write stories galore, but in spite of good resolutions, and the engaging company of cat and dog, I do brood and ‘dig the dead’

In short, she fired a starting gun, the echo of which was to ring out for the next fifty-five years. The Cooperative Correspondence Club, or the CCC, as it came to be known was raised from the depths of a deep longing to communicate, to share and to understand how other people, women in particular, felt. Men had networks. They had work, clubs and they played games together. Women, particularly those in rural areas were separated from the herd, isolated, often with young children in tow and no-one else to talk to.

Women from all over Britain responded to the familiarity of this cri de coeur. Ladies from all walks of life overcame the limitations of common communications – and the etiquette of the day - to create something quite unique.

‘I am indeed sorry for ‘Ubique’ in her trouble’, wrote ‘Mother of Three’….’I wonder if Ubique would care to correspond with readers. I should be very pleased to exchange letters with her and this would give her fresh thoughts and would, I should think, cheer her up. Perhaps she would tell me if she cares for this idea.’

Ubique cared for this idea very much but she also didn’t have a lot of money for stamps. As an alternative, she suggested that they form a correspondence magazine. Each woman, writing under a pseudonym, would contribute something they had written, on any subject and mail it to Ubique. She would assemble the articles into a magazine, stitching the pages together by hand and mail the completed magazine to the first person on a pre-arranged list.

For the next fifty-five years, a group of twenty-four women did exactly this. Each month they wrote and created articles for CCC on the same subjects that interest us today. They wrote about their families and children, they chewed over politics, sex, orgasms, childbirth, religion, affairs – of the heart and otherwise – and just about everything else that women talk about now.

For fifty-five years, this magazine was read, digested, stuck in an envelope and posted onto the next person until the month drew to an end and it would all begin again.

Why am I not surprised as I write this? Because people have an innate need to connect to other human beings is why. Ask the question again: what on earth did we do before the Internet was invented? Here is your answer. People reached out to each other in precisely the same way they do now. The format was a little different but the motivation was just the same. The Cooperative Correspondence Club was a genuine precursor to the Internet. Had these ladies been around today, I have no doubt that they would have met on an Internet discussion board instead.

But would they ever have met in person? That I don’t know. This isn’t Guardian Soulmates after all. A unique set of circumstances meant that the CCC did meet in person and the war was the catalyst for this. In their effort to survive and make the best of a difficult situation, the war ended up drawing people closer together. People phoned and wrote to each other and some members of the CCC sent their children to billet with other members who lived in the countryside. Friendships were solidified and when the war was over, the CCC decided to hold a yearly ‘luncheon’ and catch up with each other face to face.

‘The first time I went to this luncheon….I was extremely nervous…I walked up and down, I was nervous to go in…I sort of crept in…and across the room there was this woman and we looked at each other…we never forgot this….there was a kind of glance or recognition between us, a sort of affinity straightaway.’

The very best thing, I am pleased to report, is that in 2003, whilst researching a subject for her master’s thesis, Jenna Bailey came across the beginnings of the CCC’s correspondence stashed away in the Mass Observation archive at Sussex University. As she delved into the archive, she realised that not only did she have a great subject for her thesis on her hands, but that she also had the beginnings of a great book.

‘Can Any Mother Help Me?’ is that book and you can buy it today on Amazon. Do not be fooled by the chick-litesque cover of this tome. This is rock solid stuff from cover to cover. These women were absolutely at their best when spinning the very real tales of their lives.

‘Can Any Mother Help Me?’ grips with a genuine cinematic tension and tightness as women recall episodes from their lives with real skill. ‘Yonire’ was forced to fight off a dear family friend in a church late one dark night. Such was the ferocity of his advance that she was forced to beat him over the head with her shoe….

‘I climbed over him and up the organ loft stairs and found a light. I switched it on and saw him lying in a pool of blood with the top of his head battered in, unconscious, and, for all I knew, dead. I was quite certain he was dead. Well, what would you have done?’

Amelia’s description of her battle to get to work during the Great Fog of 1952 is second to none. And Isis will keep you glued to your seat with the unrequited story of her love for her doctor, a passion that was to last a full three years…..

‘On one of the last afternoons in May, having done my housework and fed Matthew, I had a bath and changed into a summer dress and was just sitting down to write something for CCC when Doctor X appeared. He was wearing a natty summer suit and appeared to be in no hurry at all. When I asked, ‘Shall I fetch Matthew in?’ he said, ‘Not yet. Come and talk to me first.’….

This is a book of the finest order. For so many different reasons. If you don’t read it and spend the next year mailing it to all your friends, I will eat my hat. Don’t make me eat my hat. Or make me think of a smart ending for this post.

Pathetically, I had two, yes, two drinks of an alcoholic nature last night and feel rather the worse for wear. Don’t readers, whatever you do, ever give up alcohol. This will only ever serve to render you useless on the days that you do succumb.

Thank god for the Internet, at least I can tell you how I feel. That makes me feel slightly better. Kate is: tired but happy. And keen for you to enjoy this book as much I did. Here it is.

August 09, 2008

This will begin to make sense as I go along, but for the moment, can you imagine how much time I spend reading? I read anything I can get my mitts on, at any time of the day or night. Books, magazines, blogs, your newspaper on the tube, you name it; I am probably reading it right now. As a result, I frequently find bits and pieces that I think you might find interesting. So you know what? I thought I would share them with you.

First up is Dude of the Day (well I think he’s a dude). It’s actually a regular feature from the Observer Woman called ‘What I know about Women’. This week’s young man is called Will.i.am and he’s a rapper. I couldn’t name one of his songs if my life depended on it but I like his style. Here he is.

The following also kept me quiet for a while. It’s an article about the psychology of story telling and it backs up much of what I have discovered on my travels: that we all have an innate need to tell, and to hear, stories.

I also obsessed over this for a full fifteen minutes. It’s not an article as such but I have made it my life’s mission to visit this place at least once in my lifetime. Could someone please put me out of my misery and tell me what grits are while they’re at it?

I got slightly carried away with this too. My blogging buddy Charon QC asked the British public what irritated them. Quite a lot it would seem….I stuck my oar in a couple of times.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with any of the above but I thought I would tell you anyway. Carl, the driver at a company I freelance at came to work yesterday morning and told us a story of his own.

It was his 50th birthday the night before last and as befits a man who still likes to spend a night out on the town, he was driving his car through Chalk Farm at 3am on Friday morning when he came upon the following: two people having sex in the street. They weren’t just having sex, they were rutting like their lives depended on it.

It must have been a dark back alley, I hear you cry. No, actually, it wasn’t. It was a well-lit main street in a busy part of London and they had no clothes on. Nothing. Not a stitch. As naked as the day there were born. Totally in the buff.

August 03, 2008

Anyone who knows me will know that I have a little penchant for the law - in the shape of my old blogging buddy, Charon QC. So imagine my surprise to find myself the owner of not one, but two law blogging buddies…Victoria Pynchon is officially my new best blogging friend. And not only that, but she is also today’s guest writer.

Ms Pynchon and I have amused ourselves with various matters this week. To which end, she will write a virginity themed post on her law blog and I’ll tell you how she lost her virginity. Result!

Meanwhile, it seems churlish not to ponder on the twin concepts of virginity and law, even for just a moment. I shall leave the technical stuff to Victoria but I did google the two words together just to see what would happen and I decided to make a large generalization as a result.

When it comes to virginity, the law appears to side with men. Ok, ok, times have changed. Heck, ‘The 40 year old Virgin’ was a hit on this side of the Atlantic too you know. In the modern age, virginity can be equally applicable to men as it can be to women. Except when it comes to the law.

Because what’s with this? Which, in case you can’t be bothered to read it is the story of the man who asked for his marriage to be annulled because his wife lied about being a virgin. Again with the, ‘I know, I know’. His point was that she lied. What she lied about was not the point.

Even still, can you imagine a woman giving a flying f**k if the man she married was not a virgin? This beggars belief. And if you’d like to find out the whole story, have a look here. And here.

I decided to finish up by contradicting myself. (It’s a good thing I’m not a lawyer no?). Here is a story about a lady who has sued her partner to the tune of 1 mill for taking her virginity and then not marrying her. So, it would seem, all’s well that ends well. Lady, I like your style.

Victoria Pynchon. Born 1952, lost virginity aged 17

‘When can I say I lost my virginity? Was it in February of 1970 in my senior year of high school when I spent four hours kissing my brand new boyfriend on the stiff cloth of a Ramada Inn mattress in Torrance, California? I did dramatic interpretation and he was a debater who'd decided just that morning that I had great legs. I was seventeen years old and this was my first and my 230th, kiss.

When we finally parted at 3 am, I stumbled into my speech coach’s room crying and choked out these words: ‘I think I’m a slut.’ Coach Norma Basgall said soothing and reassuring things but it was no comfort. I know people who have smoked crack cocaine. Reputable people. Lawyers in fancy firms. The experience they describe is how I felt that evening in Torrance. No matter what anyone said, I knew immediately I was addicted. I knew there would be a price to pay.

Months of agonizing followed. The ‘sexual revolution’ hadn’t arrived in La Mesa, California in 1970. Those unfortunates whose loss of virginity resulted in pregnancy were shuttled away to local ‘continuation’ high schools. They were never mentioned again. It was as if they'd never existed. If we'd lived in the U.S.S.R., their photos would have been excised from the school history books - the yearly ‘Annual.’

My friends and I were wiser. We read what we could get our hands on, (it was the year of the bestseller ‘Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask’). Planned Parenthood was in the news because it advocated a woman's right to control her own reproductive cycle. Sadly, still a hot issue almost forty years later.

Until we got ‘the pill’ -- gratis and without parental consent, we eschewed ‘penetration.’ This wasn't just pregnancy prevention. It was about virginity. The farther we went – first, second and third ‘base’ – the more alternatively repulsed and excited we were. We explored with our boyfriends and reported back to the girls. We explored everything and our experimentation lasted for hours. Entire afternoons. Late enough into the night that mothers became alarmed and fathers cleared their throats to deliver stern warnings. We believed we were the first generation ever to wheel completely out of their control.

The moment of reckoning took place at my friend Judie's pool party in July of 1970. We were freshly graduated from high school, poised to make or break ourselves and our nascent plans for the long empty plain of adult-hood that stretched both tantalizingly and frighteningly before us. Brad and I made our way to the darkened bedroom of Judie's older brother. He'd made his getaway to U.C. Berkeley two years before and hadn’t been inclined to come home for pool-party summers with the family. He was the dark figure of our future beckoning to us.

This is what I remember. The taste of peanut better and the scent of chlorine. The anxiety and excitement of the long-awaited penetration. There was something hard inside of me. And then it was over. Thirty seconds? Sixty? We were both virgins. I remember this. I was incredibly annoyed. That was it? That was what I’d been holding myself against for months and my mother had been hectoring me about ever since I brought this sweet-faced blonde boy home for dinner? That was the ‘sacred’ act my parents wanted me to ‘wait until I was married’ to experience. That was what the fuss was all about?

The kissing had been better than consummation.

I don't believe we spoke to one another after that. We pulled our bathing suits back on and slunk out of the dark bedroom and back into the brilliant summer Southern California sun. I remember the way the light reflected off of each wave of sharp blue water and the high, light laughter of my girlfriends. Their knowing smiles. You could tell they wanted to adjourn the party, send the boys home and hear the story. I was the first and they’d been waiting for me to take the plunge.

I dove into the pool, swam two laps under the surface and emerged sputtering, laughing, and shaking my head in puzzlement over the adult world I’d just entered. A world that was far less fraught with danger but much more complex and nuanced than I’d been capable of imagining.

The ‘sixties’ would arrive in San Diego in my first year of college. Or maybe that was just when they arrived for me. Sex became commonplace before I decided conquest was insufficiently arresting to justify the moment when I'd wish whatever stranger was in my bed would just go home.

When did I lose my virginity? Not that summer day at the pool. I lost my innocence the night my sexual desire caught fire on a lumpy mattress in Torrance, California. The evening I first experienced passion, carnal bliss, and regret at the very same time.’